A familiar template with strong execution.
Creative Staff:
Story: Monica Gallagher, Alex Segura
Art: George Kambadais, Marco Finnegan
Colors: Ellie Wright
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
Burnt out cops reporter Lara Dominguez finds herself on the defensive, battling back thugs attacking one of her GED-prep students after class. There’s a new player on the Creighton crime scene, she’s told. Lara moved to Creighton to escape her past in Miami, and found a new obsession – the city’s debonair vigilante, The Black Ghost. Unable to focus on anything else – and goaded on by her cyber-connection, LONE – Lara faces a crossroads: continue on a mad crusade to unmask the Ghost in search of a scoop, or find herself in the line of fire?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having dabbled in a few ComiXology Originals projects, I was sent a copy of The Black Ghost to try and was intrigued by the cover artwork. I’ve read a few things from Alex Segura before so I know the basics of his style but Monica Gallagher was a new writer for me who has several series under her belt. Working with artist George Kanbadais, they’re all on the “created by” side for the character and working with familiar noir style influences that you can see easily enough. That’s never a bother if you can see the new creative coming up with ways to bring it to life in a new way. This reminds me of some of the pulps to a degree but with both a modern spin and a timeless element about it.
Taking place in the city of Creighton somewhere on the Mid-Atlantic coast, we’re introduced to Lara Dominguez. She’s a hardened reporter for the Courier where she’s stuck on the cop beat and writing stories that don’t work for her. She’s got a rough past that involves her brother being killed a few years prior that lead to her remaking herself with all sorts of training. That’s not exactly Batman-level kinds of things but she got serious about self-defense and her physical strength and agility. That comes in handy at the opening of the book where she helps out a young man being accosted near the docks by some thugs. She ends up getting knocked out herself in the end, however, and he brings her back to his place to recover, which is where things get underway as we learn she also spends time as a continuing education teacher with night classes.
What we get with Creighton is that there’s something more going on here. We get the familiar wealthy citizen type out there that’s about to do a revitalization project with “The Dregs” portion of the city which is going to be a problem. But there’s also a mystery player at work in the city known as the Black Ghost, a Tuxdeo-Mask/The shadow style type character that helps people out but is unreported on by the press as it goes against the bosses wishes. That’s what’s really interesting Lara in terms of story but she has something that’s really secret that’s changed her life recently. A mysterious entity known just as Lone appears to her through her computer helping her with stories and suggesting places to be in order to get scoops. She’s keeping quiet on that but using what she gets as she does have some decent stories out of it. That it leads her to the Black Ghost at the end of the issue with a pivotal moment? Just the kind of tease you’d expect.
In Summary:
With as much media as I consume there’s just that sense that you’ve seen it all and read it all before – and that’s true in terms of structure and setup elements. But what makes projects unique are the things that writers like Gallagher and Segura bring to the script and what Kambadais brings to the visual design. There are homage moments to the days of yore but I also had a huge dose of 80s Marvel sensibilities about Lara’s background story as it unfolded and felt like the setup for any number of colorfully costumed heroes. There are plenty of real world issues wrapped up in the origin and the story here for Lara that gives her weight, makes her accessible, and places her into things that we can identify with. And the introduction of the actual Black Ghost with a potential bit of fantasy and more mixed into it has me interested in seeing what truths we’ll discover from there and what direction that the team intends to take this five-issue run with.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: New Wave Comics / ComiXology Originals
Release Date: September 18th, 2019
MSRP: $2.99